James 3:13-18 ”Wisdom from Above”

Let us start this morning with verse 15: “Such wisdom does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.” This idea is not difficult to understand. In this idea is the simple vision that we have two different kinds of wisdom: We have earthly wisdom and wisdom that comes down from heaven to us. This is the kind of wisdom that comes down in moments of inspiration that we feel. It comes with the Spirit of God to us.

We know for instance that if an artist wants to paint a masterpiece—that is his/her ambition in life—but begins to wonder while standing in front of the blank canvas how much he/she will sell it for, or what the critics will think of it, he won’t be able to create much of anything on that canvas. If his/her art is to be inspired then he/she must focus on just painting and forget the earthly anxieties.

This is what we are called to do as Christians. But, we all know that it is a great struggle. Calvin, the great religious reformer, said it like this:

If we, then, are not our own but the Lord’s, it is clear what error we must flee, and whither we must direct all the acts of our life. We are not our own: let not our reason not our will, therefore, sway our plans and deeds. WE are not our own: let us therefore not set it as our goal to seek what is expedient for us according to the flesh. We are not our own: in so far as we can, let us therefore forget ourselves and all that is ours.

And Calvin goes onto state how such a life should be in this world:

We are God’s. Let us therefore live for Him and die for Him. We are God’s . . . .For, as consulting our self-interest is the pestilence that most effectively leads to our destruction, so the sole haven of salvation is to be wise in nothing and to will nothing ourselves but to follow the leading of the Lord alone.

A major part of believing in God is therefore denying ourselves. It is the final realization that our human abilities and efforts can do nothing for us. Instead, we have to accept by faith what God is doing through us. We have to become people of the Pentecost that were able to accept the power coming out of heaven and taking over their lives. Can you imagine the Pentecost story wherein the people gathered in Jerusalem denied the power of the Spirit over them?!

Still we cannot deceive ourselves into thinking that we are ever fully able as mortals to accept God’s will totally in our lives no matter how much we abandon ourselves to the Spirit. Saint Augustine describes this struggle that we all have to go through:

The new will that had begun in me—and made me want to be free to worship and to enjoy you, God, the only certain joy—was not yet strong enough to overpower the old will that had become tough with age. So there were now two wills battling it out inside me, one old, one new; one carnal, one spiritual; and in the conflict they ripped my soul to pieces.

Before James tells the churches to accept the will of God in their lives, which we will talk more about next week as Chapter Four of his letter, it is quite clear on this issue, he tells his people that they must first accept heavenly wisdom into their lives–the power of the Spirit. He describes this wisdom: “The wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.” This is what we must invite into ourselves from God to counter-act all of the selfish ambition that we have. This is the struggle that we must take on. We must be peace loving, considerate, submissive, merciful, impartial, and sincere so that our selfish ambition will not take over our lives and the lives of others.

If we are going to have ambitions, then they need to be the good ambitions that would come from accepting heavenly wisdom into our lives. Our ambitions, must be as the last line of the reading suggests: “To sow peace and raise a harvest of righteousness.”

Jesus, our Lord, had no other earthly ambition then to heal, preach, and save us to eternal life. In this ambition he denied himself by dying on the Cross. In other words his ambitions were for us. Our ambitions must be for Him.

Do you love word origins as much as I do? Language study has been one of my life’s ambitions. I think that everyone loves it when they find out the strange beginnings of words in English. Let us talk about the word “ambition.” The word in English has an interesting beginning. It is a Latin word of course. In the Latin sense of the word it means “to walk around.” In ancient Rome, the politicians if they wanted to be elected had to be ambitious and walk around Rome soliciting support.

James is not in favor of people being politically ambitious at all according to what we read this morning. However, he really is not talking about soliciting votes. He was referring to people in the early church that were using the church for finding honor for themselves rather than God. He is referring to an ambition that mirrors more the German “Ehrsucht,” to go out looking to find honor for yourself—to seek honor. Indeed, this is what we think of most often in English.

I have to bring this up in order to avoid confusion when we read our bibles. Let us look at Romans 15:20, in which Paul seems to be using the word “ambition” in a positive way. You can see in your pew Bibles where it says: “It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known . . . .” So, I went to look up the word in the Greek and discovered that I did not know it. I got out my Greek dictionary to look it up. The word φιλοτιμέομαι is a positive word for ambition. It means a good ambition. It is a kind of ambition that is a drive to honor others and God rather than honoring one’s self. This is different than the “ambition” word that James uses even though they are both translated as “ambition” in English.

The word that James uses in our text for this morning is the Greek εριθειαν, which is the participial form of the word ερις, meaning strife and discord. If you remember your Greek mythology, Eris was the mythological goddess of strife and discord. I think that the word is used on purpose to relate it back to the pagan religions of James’s time. James is saying that in the old pagan religion you had Eris, strife and discord, but it does not belong in the new religion of Jesus Christ.

In the new religion of Jesus Christ, your ambition is no longer for yourself but rather to aim for what is godly and beautiful in this world. It is to aspire to the noblest reasons and actions in your life. As Robert Browning once said: “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what is heaven for?” Indeed, our ambition is not for this world but for the next. We should have no ambitions for the things of this world, but only for the glory of God and the purposes of heaven.

So, we need to answer the initial question from James: Do you want to be wise? That wisdom comes through the Holy Spirit as it did on Pentecost. That wisdom comes when our ambitions are for the ministry of Jesus Christ. And, it is wisdom, not just knowledge. It is not just knowing your bible.

I heard wisdom once compared to knowledge in this way: “Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit and not a vegetable; Wisdom is knowing that you do not put tomatoes in fruit salad.”

Godly wisdom is allowing the Spirit to speak through so that the wisdom from above is what directs your speech and your life.

Amen.